Category: Crime Comics

By Hergé, Bob De Moor, Roger Leloup and others, translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner (Egmont UK)
ISBN: 978-1-40520-818-5 (HB) 978-140520-630-3 (TPB)

Georges Prosper Remi, known all over the world as Hergé, created a timeless masterpiece of graphic literature with his tales of a plucky boy reporter and entourage of iconic associates.

Singly, and later with assistants including Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and other supreme stylists of the Hergé Studio, he created 23 splendid volumes (originally serialised in instalments for a variety of newspaper periodicals) which have grown beyond their pop culture roots to attain the status of High Art.

On leaving school in 1925, Remi worked for the conservative Catholic newspaper Le Vingtiéme Siécle where he fell under the influence of its Svengali-esque editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. A devoted boy scout, a year later the artist produced his first strip series The Adventures of Totor for monthly Boy Scouts of Belgium magazine. By 1928 he was in charge of producing the contents of the newspaper’s weekly children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtiéme.

While illustrating The Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonette – written by the staff sports reporter – Wallez asked Remi to create a new adventure series. Perhaps a young reporter who roamed the world, doing good whilst displaying solid Catholic values and virtues?

The rest is history…

Some of that history is quite dark: During the Nazi Occupation of Belgium, Le Vingtiéme Siécle was closed down and Hergé was compelled to move his supremely popular strip to daily newspaper Le Soir (Brussels’ most prominent French-language periodical, and thus appropriated and controlled by the Nazis).

He diligently toiled on for the duration, but following Belgium’s liberation was accused of collaboration and even being a Nazi sympathiser. It took the intervention of Belgian Resistance war-hero Raymond Leblanc to dispel the cloud over Hergé, which he did by simply vouching for the cartoonist. Leblanc also provided cash to create a new magazine – Le Journal de Tintin – which he published and managed. The anthology comic swiftly achieved a weekly circulation in the hundreds of thousands, which allowed the artist and his team to remaster past tales: excising material dictated by the occupiers and unwillingly added to ideologically shade the war time adventures. The modernising exercise generally improved and updated the great tales, just in time for Tintin to become a global phenomenon.

With World War II over and his reputation restored, Hergé entered the most successful period of his artistic career. He had mastered his storytelling craft, possessed a dedicated audience eager for his every effort and was finally able to say exactly what he wanted in his work, free from fear or censure. Although Hergé’s later life was plagued by personal and health problems, this only seemed to enhance his storytelling abilities.

Coke en stock began initial serialisation in Le Journal de Tintin from 31^st October 1956 and on completion (1^st January 1958) issue was collected into album form. In 1960 it voyaged across the channel to become The Adventures of Tintin: The Red Sea Sharks: a slick, perfectly polished comedy thriller, rife with intrigue and camaraderie. Even after decades it reads as a fresh and challenging romp ideal for young and old alike.

The Red Sea Sharks has lost none of its original contemporary urgency. Produced during the turbulent times that led to the Middle Eastern Suez Crisis, it remains worryingly relevant with nations and mad millionaires carrying out proxy wars amidst the sand dunes and shipping lanes…

The yarn reintroduces Emir Ben Kalish Ezab (from Land of Black Gold) whose oil-rich country is in the throes of a civil war manufactured by the moneyed powers of the West. Fearful of the consequences, the hard-pressed potentate sends his son Abdullah to stay with Captain Haddock at rural Marlinspike Hall, unaware that the old dipsomaniac and Tintin are currently embroiled in a minor mystery involving former south American dictator General Alcazar (The Broken Ear), cheap war surplus aircraft and a hidden criminal mastermind…

As eager to escape the infernal practical jokes of the incorrigible Prince Abdullah as to solve the case, the heroic pair trace the trail of the sinister arms dealers and soon find themselves back in the Desert Kingdom of Khemed.

The Europeans are closely monitored and arrive as unwelcome intruders after the rebels defeat the Emir and drive him into hiding, thanks to their illicitly gained fighter planes. When a hidden bomb leaves Tintin’s plane wrecked in the wastelands, the indomitable pair trek overland into enemy territory before finally finding the Emir-in-hiding.

Here they learn the coup has been instigated by the Marquis di Gorgonzola, an enigmatic self-made millionaire whose vast commercial interests are supplemented by selling into slavery pilgrims undertaking the Hajj to Mecca!

Hot on the trail, the pair take ship for that holy city but are strafed by warplanes. Shooting one down they rescue the pilot, but when they and their new-found ally are rescued by Gorgonzola’s yacht, Tintin discovers that one of his oldest foes is behind it all…

This spectacular high-adventure, despite its political and moral underpinnings, is primarily an action yarn with plenty of twists and turns and a terrific feel-good climax.
The Red Sea Sharks: artwork © 1958, 1986 Editions Casterman, Paris & Tournai. Text © 1960 Egmont UK Limited. All Rights Reserved.

By Hergé & various; translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner (Egmont)
ISBN: 978-1-40520-808-6 (HB)                    : 978-0-31619-876-9 (PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Comics and Presents don’t get better than this… 10/10

Georges Prosper Remi – AKA Hergé – created a true masterpiece of graphic literature with his many tales of a plucky boy reporter and his entourage of iconic associates. Singly, and later with assistants including Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and the Hergé Studio, Remi completed 23 splendid volumes (originally produced in brief instalments for a variety of periodicals) that have grown beyond their popular culture roots and attained the status of High Art.

It’s only fair, though, to ascribe a substantial proportion of credit to the many translators whose diligent contributions have enabled the series to be understood and beloved in 38 languages. The subtle, canny, witty and slyly funny English versions are the work of Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner.

On leaving school in 1925, Remi worked for Catholic newspaper Le Vingtiéme Siécle where he fell under the influence of its Svengali-like editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. The following year, the young artist – a passionate and dedicated boy scout – produced his first strip series: The Adventures of Totor for the monthly Boy Scouts of Belgium magazine.

By 1928 he was in charge of producing the contents of the paper’s children’s weekly supplement Le Petit Vingtiéme and unhappily illustrating The Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonette when Abbot Wallez urged Remi to create a new adventure series. Perhaps a young reporter who would travel the world, doing good whilst displaying solid Catholic values and virtues?

And also, perhaps, highlight and expose some the Faith’s greatest enemies and threats…?

Having recently discovered the word balloon in imported newspaper strips, Remi decided to incorporate this simple yet effective innovation into his own work.

He would produce a strip that was modern and action-packed. Beginning January 10^th 1929, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared in weekly instalments, running until May 8^th 1930.

Accompanied by his dog Milou (Snowy to us Brits), the clean-cut, no-nonsense boy-hero – a combination of Ideal Good Scout and Remi’s own brother Paul (a soldier in the Belgian Army) – would report back all the inequities of the world, since the strip’s prime conceit was that Tintin was an actual foreign correspondent for Le Petit Vingtiéme…

The odyssey was a huge success, assuring further – albeit less politically charged and controversial – exploits to follow. At least that was the plan…

During the Nazi Occupation of Belgium, Le Petit Vingtiéme was closed down and Hergé was compelled to move the popular strip to straight daily newspaper. He diligently continued producing strips for the duration, but in the period following Belgium’s liberation was accused of being a collaborator and even a Nazi sympathiser.

It took the intervention of Resistance hero Raymond Leblanc to dispel the cloud over Hergé, which he did by simply vouching for the cartoonist and by providing the cash to create a new magazine – Le Journal de Tintin – which he published and managed. The anthology comic swiftly achieved a weekly circulation in the hundreds of thousands.

With this tale we enter the Golden Age of an iconic creator’s work. Despite being produced whilst Belgium was under the control of Nazi Occupation Forces during World War II, the qualitative leap in all aspects of Hergé’s creativity is tangible.

His homeland fell to the invaders in 1940, and Georges Remi’s brief military career was over. He was a reserve Lieutenant, working on The Land of Black Gold when he was called up, but the swift fall of Belgium meant that he was back at his drawing board before the year’s end, albeit working for a new paper on a brand-new adventure. He would not return to the unfinished ‘Black Gold’, with its highly anti-fascistic subtext, until 1949.

Initially Le Crabe aux pinces d’or featured in children’s supplement Le Soir Jeunesse, from October 17^th 1940 to September 3^rd 1941, when increasing paper shortages resulted in the kid’s section being axed. The strip continued in parent paper Le Soir (Belgium’s premiere French-language newspaper and a most crucial tool for the occupiers to control minds if not hearts) until conclusion on 18^th October 1941: the first of six extraordinary tales of light-hearted, escapist thrills, with strong plots and deep characterisation that created a haven of delight from the daily horrors of everyday life then and remain a legacy of joyous adventure to this day.

On completion it was collected as a monochrome book in 1941 and later serialised in French newspaper Coeurs Vaillants (from June 21^st 1942), before being re-released as a full colour volume in 1943. Its success sparked a flurry of reissues of earlier albums – all but Tintin in America and The Black Island, both set in countries Germany was still at war with…

This remastered edition of The Crab with the Golden Claws was modified by Studio Hergé and released in 1953: revised to accommodate the wishes of publishers in the US and UK. It opens with Snowy getting his head caught in an empty crab-meat can whilst scavenging in a trash bin. When Tintin meets the detectives Thompson and Thomson, they discuss their latest case and he sees that a vital piece of evidence is a scrap of label from a crab-meat tin – and it matches the torn label on the can he so recently extricated his bad dog from!

And so begins a superb mystery adventure as Tintin follows his lead to the sinister freighter “Karaboudjan” where he uncovers a sinister criminal enterprise and is nearly murdered before the diabolical first mate Allan (last seen in Cigars of the Pharaoh) shanghaies him.

It is whilst a prisoner that the boy reporter meets a drunken reprobate who would become his greatest companion: The ship’s inebriated Master, Captain Haddock.

Escaping together, they eventually reach the African Coast, with Haddock’s dipsomaniac antics as much a threat to the pair as the gangsters, ocean storms, and deprivation. These trials are masterpieces of comedy cartooning that have never been surpassed.

Despite all odds the heroes survive sea, sands and scoundrels to link up with the military authorities. Making their perilous way to Morocco, battling Berber desert raiders and Haddock’s ongoing hallucinations, the plucky pair – and Snowy – track down the criminals to reveal a huge opium smuggling operation. A fast-paced tour-de-force of art and action, liberally laced with primal comedy and captivating exotic locales, this is quite simply mesmerising fare.

Full of dash, as breathtaking as a rollercoaster ride and as compelling as any Indiana Jones romp, this is classic adventure to match the best of the cinema’s swashbucklers and as suspenseful as a Hitchcock thriller, balancing insane laughs with moments of genuine tension.

Clearly as the world experienced a new Dark Age, Hergé was concentrating on the next -Golden – one…

These ripping yarns for all ages are an unparalleled highpoint in the history of graphic narrative. Their constant popularity proves them to be a worthy addition to the list of world classics of literature.
The Crab with the Golden Claws: artwork © 1953, 1981 Editions Casterman, Paris & Tournai. Text © 1958 Egmont UK Limited. All Rights Reserved.